


Star Plague

by Phlyarologist



Category: Original Work
Genre: Extra Trick, Gen, Skeletons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 03:14:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21246554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phlyarologist/pseuds/Phlyarologist
Summary: The planet defends itself, futilely.





	Star Plague

**Author's Note:**

  * For [diefleder_tey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/diefleder_tey/gifts).

The magnetic poles are reversing by the week now. The binary sun, always dim and distant here, can no longer penetrate the ash pouring from the mountaintops. Everything is shaking, always. The seismograph reads, “You are all coming down with me.” 

This is a fever that will, by design, never break.

Some planets are like this. They resist our best efforts at cultivation. They alter their orbits or their seismic activity. They withdraw their mineral deposits beyond reach of our probes. They kick up storms that last decades. Some of them sustain smaller lifeforms, too, like the planet we left behind. Of these, an especially obstinate subset show a willingness to kill all that walks or swims or flies within their gravity well just to keep us away. This one was slow to take that step; first it made a point of unearthing things already dead, skeletons larger than the largest of our ships, at our every landing site. It heaved up a skull under our base camp so large that the cafeteria disappeared into a single eye socket.

We were not deterred. Our great Empire must expand. The air grew hot and great dying things floundered out of the sea to rot in our water supply, and though the illness was not beyond our ability to treat, our commander lost patience. We landed the injector. It is not large, and its construction is lightweight. We have found this approach best on other planets; it is more susceptible to breakage, but what does that matter, if the planet does not notice until the payload is delivered? The drill only needs to reach a magma chamber – any magma chamber – and the disease will take hold in a matter of years.

It is a long game, killing a planet. We have a longer wait, once it is dead, for it to become suitable for habitation. But the Empire's time scales are grand. We will want this foothold someday. We will want this lump of rock to be quiet, beyond all ability to resent our presence.

It has been a worthy opponent. It held on longer than we expected. But everything is dead now but us, and the delirious mind rolling around in its core. And we are preparing to leave, before its paroxysms grow too powerful to allow a launch and the wandering magnetic field destroys our equipment.

Despite all a planet can do, my shipmates will escape. I will remain; this planet killer is a new strain, and I wish to document its critical stages. Settlers will come someday to find the planet's corpse and mine, and marvel at what we achieved.

Or perhaps they will not find me, or my records. The planet is mad and dying, but its cunning is not exhausted. I gamble that I am too small for it to kill, or when dead that I am too trivial for it to destroy my corpse. But if I judge this wrong – what a compliment!


End file.
